Media Strategies Editor Jim Meskauskas ponders the definition of adware, and what that definition means for advertisers and consumers alike.
Nearly every surface onto which an image can be placed or words can be written has been considered for, if not already taken by, advertising.
The desktop is no different. The moment it became obvious that people were going to be spending just as much time at their desks, using their computers either for work or for entertainment, then using it as means of address for marketing became a consideration for any media planner trying to do well by their client.
There are now all manner of publishers making their way onto the desktop, and marketers have followed.
Weather applications, like Weatherbug or the Weather.com toolbar, live on the desktop but reach out through the internet to get information that serves the application (in this case, weather data) and delivers it to the user. According to Weatherbug’s own figures, their desktop weather application has been downloaded some sixty-eight million times (this does not account for how many may be in actual use).
Software clients like WhenU or Claria are downloadable applications whose primary purpose is to serve ads to users based on the sites they visit and the activities they perform while online. According to both companies, their user base on a monthly basis is twelve-million and forty-million, respectively.
Digital music and video players are nearly ubiquitous, living on the desktop where they can be positioned to rest in plain view of the user.
Instant messaging tools, like AOL’s Instant Messenger, MSN Messenger, and Yahoo! Messenger can be found on nearly every computer in use.
According to @plan Fall 2005 data, 43.2 million people using the internet are using instant messenger devices every day
What is clear is that our computers, how we use them, and how they are used as a channel for marketing is so different from how it is we used to think about media, that it is forcing us to… well, think differently about media.
Instant Messenger
The popularity of instant messenger among young people is a natural draw for certain categories of advertisers. Chief among them is the entertainment category.
In March of this year, the instant messenger technology company MECA Communications partnered with the Fox Network’s talent show hit "American Idol" to launch the American Idol Experience Messenger, a free branded instant messenger service.
The American Idol IM service was compatible with Yahoo!, MSN, AOL's AIM or ICQ IM services. The service enables fans of the show to access exclusive American Idol-specific content such as rich media features and promotions.
Warner Brothers, United Paramount Network, NBC Universal, and New Line Cinema have also entered the fray, running graphics, sponsoring branded “skins” (customizable graphic facades that serve as a kind of proscenium for the text window), and even cursor-triggered video.
But it isn’t only teens and young adults using instant messenger, even if they do represent the highest concentration of user (nearly 42-percent of all IM users are between the ages of 18 and 34, according to the latest @plan figures). Because of this, advertisers including Volvo, Daimler Chrysler, Procter & Gamble, Nike, Tysons Chicken and ING Direct are also participating in IM-related ad campaigns.
Classmates.com is a regular advertiser on AIM.
The growth of broadband coupled with the level of personalization achievable with instant messenger tools has finally made it an attractive advertising vehicle. Marketers can reach out to users with more appealing graphics and can offer users more attractive features that provide utility or entertainment while integrating the marketer’s brand.
In April, Microsoft released the latest version of MSN Messenger, which will introduce the concept of "branded experience advertising" to the instant-messaging software. Advertisers can now offer specialized backgrounds, icons, animated pictures, music and other features that incorporate their advertising themes.
"Traditional" adware
When you talk to most people in the internet advertising business, and more and more, when you talk to people outside of it, the term "adware" is used as a catch-all for nearly every form of advertising online at which users take umbrage.
When Bill Day took over as WhenU’s CEO in October of last year, one of the tasks he took on was to put focus on the consumer and in so doing, redefine what adware really is.
“The whole environment created around the decision-making process for the consumer is very, very negative. And that alone is very problematic,” Day told me in a conversation recently.
The context of the online advertising conversation has become poisoned by poorly articulated concerns regarding privacy and desktop security, and WhenU has made addressing this a top priority.
One of the ways they are doing that is to clarify how the product works. Most people, when they think of adware, they think of an insidious intelligent machine that creeps among us unrecognized or unseen -- like the new breed of Cylon in the new version of “Battlestar Galactica” -- collecting personal information to be used against the people.
People download anti-spyware software to protect their systems and cleanse them of this perceived scourge. However, some of the anti-spyware software out there is just plain wrong in how it identifies WhenU by indicating that the software transmits personal information. As Mr. Day points out, WhenU doesn’t do that.
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